


Lower Me Slowly And Sadly And Properly

by thepurpleswitch (andchimeras)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Episode Related, Episode: s02e01 In My Time of Dying, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-10-05
Updated: 2006-10-05
Packaged: 2017-10-09 17:02:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/89675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andchimeras/pseuds/thepurpleswitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It's not the truth--that's what matters." The Winchesters bring out their dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lower Me Slowly And Sadly And Properly

**Author's Note:**

> Written post-IMTD, pre-ELAC, without spoilers. Title from "At the Hundredth Meridian" by The Tragically Hip. Lawrence is at 95.235W, which is close enough for me.

Dean listens to Sam making arrangements to have their father's body moved to Kansas for cremation and inurnment. Dean isn't involved in the conversation. He's in his bed, sat up at forty-five degrees, staring out the window.

He's thinking about this one time in Birmingham; it snowed for three days straight. The Impala wouldn't start. Dean and his dad had to push it out of the motel parking lot and down the street, Sam behind the wheel, fourteen and kind of scared. Eventually they hit a downhill slope and Dean jumped in the front seat as the car rolled. He reached across Sam's chest and held the steering wheel so they didn't hit any telephone poles. He turned the key hard and the engine started, steam and exhaust blooming at the tailpipe, the taste of gasoline in the air. His dad ran up behind the car, slipped on a patch of ice and landed on his ass, swearing a blue streak, breath fogging around him.

"I'll get you the shipping address and a credit card this afternoon," Sam says, and the two undertakers leave Dean's room.

"Don't do it," Dean says.

Sam turns from the door. "Why not?"

   
 

The groundskeeper looks about a hundred years old, like he might have dug the fist grave in the cemetery. The fence is falling down wood and shoulder-high weeds. Crosses stand crooked, stones half-sunk, names unreadable. Sam pounds a white cross into the ground at the head of their father's coffin, JOHN WINCHESTER affixed to it in small iron letters. He uses the flat of the groundskeeper's shovel as a hammer. A dozen crows caw on the telephone lines along the road.

The groundskeeper takes his shovel in both gnarled hands and limps away, back to his ancient stepside truck. A primer-blue and grey Camaro is parked next to it, wearing a pair of stolen plates from New Mexico.

Dean rubs the electrical burn on his chest absently, his Astarte charm bumping his fingers.

"Ashes to ashes," Sam says.

Dean picks up a handful of dirt from the grave and puts it in a mason jar. He screws the lid on tight. He wipes his dirty hand on his jeans.

"Dust--" Sam says.

"Shut up, Sam," Dean says. "Not yet."

Sam clenches his teeth and puts his pocket _Book of Common Prayer_ back in his jacket.

   
 

The gravel county road spits rocks up into the Camaro's undercarriage, plumes dust out behind.

The sky is low and grey-white, the hills low and grey-brown. Dean keeps glancing in the rear view, expecting his father to be hunched in the low back seat with a pissed off look on his face.

Sam holds onto his seatbelt with both hands and watches a windmill rusting in the distance, watches the perspective shift as the car moves.

A crow hops along the dusty grey shoulder, hops up onto a dry mud-clumped rock. Dean's hands tighten on the steering wheel and his eyes don't leave the road.

"We should have just waited for him to leave," Sam says finally, when Auxvasse is creeping into sight again. The gas station at the town limits is abandoned, the windows broken, like eyes swollen shut.

"And if anybody ever figures it out, anybody ever asks him what happened, who'd be the last people he saw there?" Dean asks, his voice hard.

Sam looks away from the windmill, looks at Dean. "Okay," he says, because nobody would think to suspect them anyway, right?

In Dean's pocket is the certificate that says his father is buried in Kingdom City Cemetery. The jar of dirt sits on the console between the narrow bucket seats.

   
 

"We should use cloves," Sam says, in the cooking needs aisle of the Auxvasse Pack N'Food.

Dean pulls a packet of cloves from the rack. "Protection from outside forces?" he asks. The very definition of too little, too late.

Sam puts a packet of sage in their basket. "Protection on a journey," he says.

   
 

The river is a low dark line against the three-in-the-morning sky. Houselights burn across the water but don't reflect.

It comes, flaring tiny and blue-yellow. It falls, and the riverside is dark again. Then, a burst of flame. Crackling, growing.

Soon the smell reaches Sam and he shivers, hates it. The hair on the back of his neck and his arms stands on end.

Silhouetted against the ground-level pyre is Dean. He adds cloves, rosehips, juniper berries to confuse the acrid stench. He stands close to the fire, hands at his sides.

After a while, he puts his hands in his pockets. Smoke blooms in shadow clouds, up and up, a tower, signs and symbols in the night.

Hours later, Sam's eyes water and sting from the smoke. Dean hasn't moved.

"Here," Sam says in the dawn light, bumping Dean's arm with the empty coffee can.

Dean takes it with both hands. He looks down at the ash and riverbank dust.

"Should have stolen the shovel too," he says. His smile is small and cracked.

"Yeah," Sam says.

   
 

They park the car across the street. The door of the house is red now, with a long pane of glass. Easily breakable, transparent. Dean jerks his door open, the coffee can under his arm.

Sam locks the doors after Dean slams his shut.

"You not coming?" Dean asks.

Sam shakes his head. Dean stares at him. "No," Sam says.

Dean looks over his shoulder at the house. The living room curtains are open and he can see the TV, playing something bright-coloured and fast-moving. He doesn't think he'll be able to convince Jenny to let him dump his father's ashes in her backyard, not by himself. No matter how she tilted her head when she smiled at him or put her hands in her back pockets when she walked away from him.

He looks back down at Sam.

"I know you can't do it alone," Sam says. "I just."

Dean stands beside the car, waiting.

Sam sighs and unlocks his door.

   
 

Sam buys the _Lawrence Journal-World_ at the motel office. The desk clerk squints at him and for a moment he's worried that she might recognise him, Dean's paranoia acquired by proximity. She adds a nickel to his change and smiles at him, her dentures yellow and sticky-looking.

"Thanks," he says, and smiles back.

In their room, he sits at the desk and spreads the paper open. The obituaries section is small.  


> John Robert Winchester died of a heart attack on Sunday, May 21 at Callaway County Hospital in Fulton, Missouri. He was born in Marfa, Texas on June 27, 1953. He married Lawrence native Mary Hiebold in 1973 and served as a Marine in Vietnam and Iran before opening an automotive repair shop in Lawrence in 1979. John had two sons with Mary and was widowed in 1983. He left Lawrence in 1984. He is survived by his son Sam Winchester, having lost his elder son Dean in October of last year. A private interment service was held at Kingdom City Cemetery in Kingdom City, Missouri on May 23.

  
"No one's going to fall for this," Sam says.

Dean drinks the last of his beer and sets it on the windowsill. He takes his feet down from the bed.

"It doesn't matter," he says. "It's not the truth--that's what matters."

 

End.


End file.
